July 2008 Unlike Sighişoara, Târgu Mureş doesn’t have, at least in my books, too much of a “touristic” conotation. Top of mind I know only about the medicine univesity, and picture many blocks of flats. That is, till yesterday. You can’t cover much in any city during a one-hour stay. Still, I think we covered…
The mini-series on Romania was born out of the question that bugged me during the Northern trip: “how does all this compare to what we have at home?” In short, if you look at size, architecture, importance in European history, it doesn’t. We don’t have anything like the urban architecture of the city of Tallinn,…
7 august I had thought of various titles for this post, but after being there I felt there is no room for any metaphor, or any subtlety. Yes, we all know the story. Nazis killed ~6 million Jews and other nationalities in concentration camps during world war 2. Problem is, we cannot think in numbers.…
Aug 7th, 2008 In the movie “The Terminal”, Tom Hanks plays a Polish man who gets blocked in an airport terminal because in his country a separatist group declares independence of the “Republic of Krakozhia”, with guns and turbulences. I still don’t get it. Is it a joke on the Polacks? If it is, I…
Aug 5th, 2008 Expectations and “first contact” were pretty grey, but changed radically as soon as I left the hostel. I had no idea where I was, so I went to the right, where the Medias-fan at the hostel told me that i would find tourist info. And up the street it was – wow.…
Aug 5, 2008 Scandinavia is no adventure. Not even the Baltix are an adventure. Arriving at 6am, after a torturing night in the bus, to an unknown place, suburb-looking, where almost everything is closed, nobody speaks any language you might understand, the local language has nothing to do with anything that might sound familiar, you…
Aug 4th 2008, 09:00 I’m in the Eurolines bus Riga-Vilnius, and have wireless internet. I can’t imagine how that works, but it works. I have no idea what to expect in/from Vilnius. I have heard nothing about the town, except for the football team Jalghiris Vilnius, which sounds like something industrial, i picture “grey”. The…
Aug 3 First impressions of Latvia were Finlandlike: lakes and forests. At least that’s as much I could see from the bus, when waking up just before arriving in Riga. First surprise, in the bus station – i can’t draw money, from 2 different cash machines. Hm. It’s raining. Maybe that’s why people on streets…
August 1 The 1000 lakes are actually more than 180000 (one hundred and eighty thousand!), and this morning i didnt know what to do with them. There i was in the middle of Karelia, the Lake District, and i wndt have liked to leave without checking them out, at least a little. One option was…
July 31 I dont know exactly why i expected this trip with so much excitement. Maybe because it’s “off the beaten path”, maybe because everything is “on the edge” and has to work perfectly within narrow margins for it to happen, donno, but i was bursting with excitement. Train was at 7:15am. Well, yeah, had…
July 30 I’m at a terrace in the center of Rovaniemi, surrounded by talkative Finns. I am wearing shorts and a Tshirt. It’s 9pm, sunny and warm on the Arctic Circle. The first impression in the Rovaniemi railway station were the probably American boy in flipflops. Dude, you’re on the Arctic Circle!! Out in the…
July 29 The first target in Helsinki was the railway station, to buy tickets for the next destination. The lady at the counter was called Ms. Ruotsalainen, which I found very cool :). That’s when I felt it – I’m in Finland! When you leave your luggage at the railway station, you should be careful…
July 28, 23:41 Announced by a lighthouse and overtaken by a boat, We reached the Åland islands around 11pm, the first and last stop on the way to Helsinki. Funnily enough (or maybe not), the red light had moved from west to north, falling behind the harbor where another Viking Line ship was anchored, empty.…
July 28, 21:13 Live transmission from the deck of the ship Marinella: sunset. Before getting here though, the highlight of the short visit in Stockholm was meeting Stefan. Very pleasant, ideal for battery-charging before the Final Call of the North. I’m sorry that I haven’t spent one more day here. After a “recovery sleep” till…
July 27 I couldn’t leave Oslo without paying them a visit. I mean, I literally could have, but it would have been a pity. Train to Stockholm was leaving at 4pm, so I took a boat to Bygdøy, museum island. First stop, at the Fram museum, specially built to host the famous polar exploring ship.…
July 25-26 The simplest way to see some of the fjords is “Norway in a nutshell”, a package trip taking you to the most famous UNESCO heritage fjords. Train from Oslo to Myrdahl, one of the most scenic train routes in the world, from there bus to Voss, and then by boat to I dont’…
July 23 The first words I heard in Oslo were “stai, ţine asta”. Turned around – 2 blondes. I thought I heard wrong. But then – “La cât vine autobuzul?” Come on, that’s too much Romanian to be just in my mind. So I turned to them and asked them for the Storgata street –…
July 22 Before leaving the crazy Is(ce)land, a few things that any normal visitor should do in Iceland, but I didn’t, for lack of time or will. Stuff I didn’t DO Take part at the “runtur”, the famous weekend barhopping activity. Starting Friday night and lasting till… sunday evening, people drink up at home, then…
Among the Nordic languages, I like Icelandic most so far. While Danish and Swedes sound jumpy when they speak, like they’d speak to little children, with stumbling sounds like „ütt’ – ött’ – ätt’ -itt”, Icelandic is more free-flowing, from the tip of the lips, with the oddest sounds combined in a pleasantly natural way.…
22 July They say that in Iceland whale watching and whale hunting vessels anchor next to each other in the ports. We tried to identify them, couldn’t though. Whale hunting is a hot topic in Iceland, highly political and emotional. Together with Norway (don’t know the status of Japan), I think they are the only…
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